Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 3 - Xenocide

by Orson Scott Card

  "How old is that story?"

  "Old," whispered Planter. "You were listening?"

  "To the last part of it." It was all right to talk to Planter at length. Either he didn't grow impatient with the slowness of Miro's speech — after all, Planter wasn't going anywhere — or his own cognitive processes had slowed to match Miro's halting pace. Either way, Planter let Miro finish his own sentences, and answered him as if he had been listening carefully. "Did I understand you to say that this Skysplitter carried little mothers with him?"

  "That's right," whispered Planter.

  "But he wasn't going to the father tree."

  "No. He just had little mothers on his carries. I learned this story years ago. Before I did any human science."

  "You know what it sounds like to me? That the story might come from a time when you didn't carry little mothers to the father tree. When the little mothers didn't lick their sustenance from the sappy inside of the mother tree. Instead they hung from the carries on the male's abdomen until the infants matured enough to burst out and take their mothers' place at the teat."

  "That's why I chanted it for you," said Planter. "I was trying to think of how it might have been, if we were intelligent before the descolada came. And finally I remembered that part in the story of Skysplitter's War."

  "He went to the place where the sky broke open."

  "The descolada got here somehow, didn't it?"

  "How old is that story?"

  "Skysplitter's War was twenty-nine generations ago. Our own forest isn't that old. But we carried songs and stories with us from our father-forest."

  "The part of the story about the sky and the stars, that could be a lot older, though, couldn't it?"

  "Very old. The father tree Skysplitter died long ago. He might have been very old even when the war took place."

  "Do you think it might be possible that this is a memory of the pequenino who first discovered the descolada? That it was brought here by a starship, and that what he saw was some kind of re-entry vehicle?"

  "That's why I chanted it."

  "If that's true, then you were definitely intelligent before the coming of the descolada."

  "All gone now," said Planter.

  "What's all gone? I don't understand."

  "Our genes of that time. Can't even guess what the descolada took away from us and threw out."

  It was true. Each descolada virus might contain within itself the complete genetic code for every native life form on Lusitania, but that was only the genetic code as it was now, in its descolada-controlled state. What the code was before the descolada came could never be reconstructed or restored.

  "Still," said Miro. "It's intriguing. To think that you already had language and songs and stories before the virus." And then, though he knew he shouldn't, he added, "Perhaps that makes it unnecessary for you to try to prove the independence of pequenino intelligence."

  "Another attempt to save the piggy," said Planter.

  A voice came over the speaker. A voice from outside the clean room.

  "You can move on out now." It was Ela. She was supposed to be asleep during Miro's shift.

  "My shift isn't over for three hours," said Miro.

  "I've got somebody else coming in."

  "There are plenty of suits."

  "I need you out here, Miro." Ela's voice brooked no possibility of disobedience. And she was the scientist in charge of this experiment.

  When he came out a few minutes later, he understood what was going on. Quara stood there, looking icy, and Ela was at least as furious. They had obviously been quarrelling again— no surprise there. The surprise was that Quara was here at all.

  "You might as well go back inside," said Quara as soon as Miro emerged from the sterilisation chamber.

  "I don't even know why I left," said Miro.

  "She insists on having a private conversation," said Ela.

  "She'll call you out," said Quara, "but she won't disconnect the auditory monitoring system."

  "We're supposed to be documenting every moment of Planter's conversation. For lucidity."

  Miro sighed. "Ela, grow up."

  She almost exploded. "Me! Me grow up! She comes in here like she thinks she's Nossa Senhora on her throne—"

  "Ela," said Miro. "Shut up and listen. Quara is Planter's only hope of living through this experiment. Can you honestly say that it wouldn't serve the purpose of this experiment to let her —"

  "All right," said Ela, cutting him off because she already grasped his argument and bowed to it. "She's the enemy of every living sentient being on this planet, but I'll cut off the auditory monitoring because she wants to have a private conversation with the brother that she's killing."

  That was too much for Quara. "You don't have to cut off anything for me," she said. "I'm sorry I came. It was a stupid mistake."

  "Quara!" shouted Miro.

  She stopped at the lab door.

  "Get the suit on and go talk to Planter. What does he have to do with her?"

  Quara glared once again at Ela, but she headed toward the sterilisation room from which Miro had just emerged.

  He felt greatly relieved. Since he knew that he had no authority at all, and that both of them were perfectly capable of telling him what he could do with his orders, the fact that they complied suggested that in fact they really wanted to comply. Quara really did want to speak to Planter. And Ela really did want her to do it. They might even be growing up enough to stop their personal differences from endangering other people's lives. There might be hope for this family yet.

  "She'll just switch it back on as soon as I'm inside," said Quara.

  "No she won't," said Miro.

  "She'll try," said Quara.

  Ela looked at her scornfully. "I know how to keep my word."

  They said nothing more to each other. Quara went inside the sterilisation chamber to dress. A few minutes later she was out in the clean room, still dripping from the descolada-killing solution that had been sprayed all over the suit as soon as she was inside it.

  Miro could hear Quara's footsteps.

  "Shut it off," he said.

  Ela reached up and pushed a button. The footsteps went silent.

  Inside his ear, Jane spoke to him. "Do you want me to play everything they say for you?"

  He sub-vocalised. "You can still hear inside there?"

  "The computer is linked to several monitors that are sensitive to vibration. I've picked up a few tricks about decoding human speech from the slightest vibrations. And the instruments are very sensitive."

  "Go ahead then," said Miro.

  "No moral qualms about invasion of privacy?"

  "Not a one," said Miro. The survival of a world was at stake. And he had kept his word— the auditory monitoring equipment was off. Ela couldn't hear what was being said.

  The conversation was nothing at first. How are you? Very sick. Much pain? Yes.

  It was Planter who broke things out of the pleasant formalities and into the heart of the issue.

  "Why do you want all my people to be slaves?"

  Quara sighed— but, to her credit, it didn't sound petulant. To Miro's practised ear, it sounded as though she were really emotionally torn. Not at all the defiant face she showed to her family. "I don't," she said.

  "Maybe you didn't forge the chains, but you hold the key and refuse to use it."

  "The descolada isn't a chain," she said. "A chain is a nothing. The descolada is alive."

  "So am I. So are all my people. Why is their life more important than ours?"

  "The descolada doesn't kill you. Your enemy is Ela and my mother. They're the ones who would kill all of you in order to keep the descolada from killing them."

  "Of course," said Planter. "Of course they would. As I would kill all of them to protect my people."

  "So your quarrel isn't with me."

  "Yes it is. Without what you know, humans and pequeninos will end up killing each other, one way or another. The
y'll have no choice. As long as the descolada can't be tamed, it will eventually destroy humanity or humanity will have to destroy it— and us along with it."

  "They'll never destroy it," said Quara.

  "Because you won't let them."

  "Any more than I'd let them destroy you. Sentient life is sentient life."

  "No," said Planter. "With raman you can live and let live. But with varelse, there can be no dialogue. Only war."

  "No such thing," Quara said. Then she launched into the same arguments she had used when Miro talked to her.

  When she was finished, there was silence for a while.

  "Are they talking still?" Ela whispered to the people who were watching in the visual monitors. Miro didn't hear an answer— somebody probably shook his head no.

  "Quara," whispered Planter.

  "I'm still here," she answered. To her credit, the argumentative tone was gone from her voice again. She had taken no joy from her cruel moral correctness.

  "That's not why you're refusing to help," he said.

  "Yes it is."

  "You'd help in a minute if it weren't your own family you had to surrender to."

  "Not true!" she shouted.

  So— Planter struck a nerve.

  "You're only so sure you're right because they're so sure you're wrong."

  "I am right!"

  "When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?"

  "I have doubts," whispered Quara.

  "Listen to your doubts," said Planter. "Save my people. And yours."

  "Who am I to decide between the descolada and our people?"

  "Exactly," said Planter. "Who are you to make such a decision?"

  "I'm not," she said. "I'm withholding a decision."

  "You know what the descolada can do. You know what it will do. Withholding a decision is a decision."

  "It's not a decision. It's not an action."

  "Failing to try to stop a murder that you might easily stop— how is that not murder?"

  "Is this why you wanted to see me? One more person telling me what to do?"

  "I have the right."

  "Because you took it upon yourself to become a martyr and die?"

  "I haven't lost my mind yet," said Planter.

  "Right. You've proved your point. Now let them get the descolada back in here and save you."

  "No."

  "Why not? Are you so sure you're right?"

  "For my own life, I can decide. I'm not like you — I don't decide for others to die."

  "If humanity dies, I die with them," said Quara.

  "Do you know why I want to die?" said Planter.

  "Why?"

  "So I don't have to watch humans and pequeninos kill each other ever again."

  Quara bowed her head.

  "You and Grego— you're both the same."

  Tears dropped onto the faceplate of the suit. "That's a lie."

  "You both refuse to listen to anybody else. You know better about everything. And when you're both done, many many innocent people are dead."

  She stood up as if to go. "Die, then," she said. "Since I'm such a murderer, why should I cry over you?" But she didn't take a step. She doesn't want to go, thought Miro.

  "Tell them," said Planter.

  She shook her head, so vigorously that tears flipped outward from her eyes, spattering the inside of the mask. If she kept that up, soon she wouldn't be able to see a thing.

  "If you tell what you know, everybody is wiser. If you keep a secret, then everyone is a fool."

  "If I tell, the descolada will die!"

  "Then let it!" cried Planter.

  The exertion was an extraordinary drain on him. The instruments in the lab went crazy for a few moments. Ela muttered under her breath as she checked with each of the technicians monitoring them.

  "Is that how you'd like me to feel about you?" asked Quara.

  "It is how you feel about me," whispered Planter. "Let him die."

  "No," she said.

  "The descolada came and enslaved my people. So what if it's sentient or not! It's a tyrant. It's a murderer. If a human being behaved the way the descolada acts, even you would agree he had to be stopped, even if killing him were the only way. Why should another species be treated more leniently than a member of your own?"

  "Because the descolada doesn't know what it's doing," said Quara. "It doesn't understand that we're intelligent."

  "It doesn't care," said Planter. "Whoever made the descolada sent it out not caring whether the species it captures or kills are sentient or not. Is that the creature you want all my people and all your people to die for? Are you so filled with hate for your family that you'll be on the side of a monster like the descolada?"

  Quara had no answer. She sank onto the stool beside Planter's bed.

  Planter reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. The suit was not so thick and impermeable that she couldn't feel the pressure of it, even though he was very weak.

  "For myself, I don't mind dying," he said. "Maybe because of the third life, we pequeninos don't have the same fear of death that you short-lived humans do. But even though I won't have the third life, Quara, I will have the kind of immortality you humans have. My name will live in the stories. Even if I have no tree at all, my name will live. And what I did. You humans can say that I'm choosing to be a martyr for nothing, but my brothers understand. By staying clear and intelligent to the end, I prove that they are who they are. I help show that our slave masters didn't make us who we are, and can't stop us from being who we are. The descolada may force us to do many things, but it doesn't own us to the very centre. Inside us there is a place that is our true self. So I don't mind dying. I will live forever in every pequenino that is free."

  "Why are you saying this when only I can hear?" said Quara.

  "Because only you have the power to kill me completely. Only you have the power to make it so my death means nothing, so that all my people die after me and there's no one left to remember. Why shouldn't I leave my testament with you alone? Only you will decide whether or not it has any worth."